Framing Faust: Twentieth-Century Cultural Struggles

by Inez Hedges

In this interdisciplinary cultural history that encompasses film, literature, music, and drama, Inez Hedges follows the thread of the Faustian rebel in the major intellectual currents of the last hundred years. She presents Faust and his counterpart Mephistopheles as antagonistic—yet complementary—figures whose productive conflict was integral to such phenomena as the birth of narrative cinema, the rise of modernist avant-gardes before World War II, and feminist critiques of Western cultural traditions. Framing Twentieth-Century Cultural Struggles pursues a dialectical approach to cultural history. Using the probing lens of cultural studies, Hedges shows how claims to the Faustian legacy permeated the struggle against Nazism in the 1930s while infusing not only the search for socialist utopias in Russia, France, and Germany, but also the quest for legitimacy on both sides of the Cold War divide after 1945. Hedges balances new perspectives on such well-known works as Thomas Mann’s Dr. Faustus and Jack Kerouac’s Dr. Sax with discussions of previously overlooked twentieth-century expressions of the Faust myth, including American film noir and the Faust films of Stan Brakhage . She evaluates musical compositions—Hanns Eisler’s Faust libretto, the opera Votre Faust by Henri Pousseur and Michel Butor, and Alfred Schnittke’s Faust Cantata— as well as works of fiction and drama in French and German, many of which have heretofore never been discussed outside narrow disciplinary confines. Enhanced by twenty-four illustrations, Framing Faust provides a fascinating and focused narrative of some of the major cultural struggles of the past century as seen through the Faustian prism, and establishes Faust as an important present-day frame of reference.

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

1947-

Inez Hedges is professor emeritus and previously professor of cultures, societies and global studies. She is the founder of the Program in Cinema Studies at Northeastern University and teaches courses in world cinema, French film, German literature and film, French film, and Palestinian and Israeli film. She was appointed as Stotsky Professor of Jewish Historical and Cultural Studies for 2006-09. Her most recent book, World Cinema and Cultural Memory (2015) examines the way films have contributed to radical or oppositional thinking in cultures as diverse as Chile, Cuba, Palestine, post-Franco Spain, France, and East Germany. Her earlier book, Framing Faust: 20th Century Cultural Struggles (2005), traces the role of the Faust myth in some of the most important historical events and traumas of the past century: the rise of Nazism and the Cold War, but also the birth of feminism and of cinema, and the experiments of socialism and the avant-garde. Her previous books, Breaking the Frame (1991) and Languages of Revolt (1983), explored questions of film and philosophy while discussing art, literature and film. She is the author of two plays on the French Shoah and resistance during WWII and is working on a third.

Reviews

[mkfs]

A fairly comprehensive survey of modern Faust plays, novels, and films.

The author appears to sympathize overmuch with the feminist and avant-garde subject matter, providing what amounts to elitist justifications for art intended to counter elitism.

There's not really much to be gained from this one: it's generally just a summary of the relevant works, with some observation regarding how each fits with its time. For the completist only, as it were.

[Burcu]

This is a comparative study on the Faustian narratives, inclusive of cinema, theatre and the social movements. There are also very informative sections on literature, history and theory.